A social network, in general, is a social structure made up of entities, such as individuals or organizations, that are connected by one or more types of interdependency or relationships, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge, or prestige. In more recent years, social networks have taken advantage of the Internet. There are social-networking systems existing on the Internet in the form of social-networking websites. A social networking system, such as a social networking website, enables its users to interact with it and with each other through the system.
The social networking system may create and store a record, often referred to as a user profile, in connection with the user. The user profile may include a user's demographic information, communication channel information, and personal interests. The social networking system may also create and store a record of a user's relationship with other users in the social networking system (e.g., social graph), as well as provide services (e.g., wall-posts, photo-sharing, or instant messaging) to facilitate social interaction between users in the social networking system. The social networking system may also create and store user preferences.
A social networking system may support application programming interfaces and associated functionality that allows third-party systems to access user profile data of its users. Such third party websites can use the user profile data can use the identity and account of a user for purposes of identifying users and maintaining their accounts at such third party websites. These third party websites may also access user profile data in order to personalize or customize the user experience on the site.